It was February 2011 when Karina Mullen saw her future career in markers on paper.

A master's student in environmental communication at Colorado State University, she attended a conference that included a graphic recorder.

"I saw that and fell in love with it," she says of graphic recording, in which the recorder creates a real-time, visual interpretation of a lecture on a large sheet of paper, allowing the group to hear the lecture and watch the drawing unfold at the same time.

A sketchbook-size drawing that Karina Mullen did when she attended President Obama s speech at Colorado State University. (Courtesy photo)

"(The person was) using images and text to capture the essence of a scientific (idea). It was easier to understand and remember the core idea of the workshop," Mullen says.

She came away with another core idea:

"I was really interested in trying it."

As a former arts major, she loved the concept. Mullen asked her adviser if she could try it at the next workshop. Encouraged, she began learning the art.

"They let me do it at the rest of the workshops. I got such a profoundly positive response that I decided to do it as part of my thesis research," says Mullen, 26, who grew up in Boulder County and graduated from Monarch High School.

The idea is simple, but its efficacy is supported by studies on how people learn.

"First of all, 75 percent of the neurons in the brain are visual," Mullen says. "It's hard-wired. When I say I want to walk the dog in the park, for most people that doesn't appear as words, it appears as an image."

She adds that people learn in four ways: kinesthetic (by moving), visual, auditory and writing. To learn something, most people need to tap into two of those modalities, or one method, plus an emotion.

Deserai Crow, associate director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, used Mullen's services at a conference on culture, politics and climate change.

"We received a lot of positive feedback on her work," Crow says. "We hung the recordings around the conference hotel. Quite a few people commented on how nice it was to have the recordings -- something different and creative, not what we are normally used to as academics -- to look at and help them interpret the content of the lectures."

Betsy Burton, co-owner of the Lyons Farmette, says her organization used Mullen as a graphic recorder at a lecture to explain the farm's seed library and during its permaculture course.

"I think people pick up on some details they wouldn't normally pick up on," Burton says.

"Sometimes, and especially when people listen to a lecture for a couple of hours, it's hard to keep the attention focused. She reinforces is the best way to put it," Burton says, adding that many people learn visually. "(With graphic recording) they understand it better and maybe remember it better."

How it works

A graphic recording by Karina Mullen at the Lyons Farmette captures the 12 permaculture design principles taught at a course on the 4-acre farm in Lyons. (Courtesy photo)

To create a recording, Mullen talks with clients in advance to get an idea what the lecture will be about. Sometimes she is given a PowerPoint presentation, although it can be hazardous to rely on advance material, she says. Once, she was given the keynote address and decided to go ahead and title the drawing. The organizers changed the keynote at the last minute without telling her, and she ended up pasting Post-It notes over the title before the talk started. Now, she simply thinks about potential images in advance.

Although the dimensions vary, recordings are often done on an 8-foot by 4-foot piece of paper. Where Mullen starts depends on the nature of the talk.

"If there's a central metaphor, I will make that big and toward the center," she says. "But usually I'll work from left to right. That's the way the mind is used to looking at things."

Along the way, she has learned some tricks. She draws images of people quickly -- with heads, a squiggle-line torso and arms and legs. If an image comes up that she can't draw spontaneously, she'll quickly use her smartphone to Google a picture to copy.

The big skill that's required is to synthesize information quickly and translate the auditory into the visual.

"The most important thing is writing down key ideas, having those on the image, putting those in a layout that makes more sense than if it were bullet points," Mullen says.

Sometimes picking an image is obvious, others not so much.

"Sometimes you have to go with whatever pops into your mind," she says. "It's a great exercise in letting go of perfectionism. It's markers and paper. You make mistakes."

However, she says, clients are usually thrilled with the drawings.

"People tell me they're still hanging in their office a year later," Mullen says. "It helps remind them of their mission or goals or vision, the things they said they would do."

Mullen, who lives in Fort Collins, charges $150 an hour or $1,500 a day for her services, which include the finished drawing both in paper and digitized from. For the latter, she often uses Photoshop to enhance the colors. In addition to CU and the Lyons Farmette, clients have included Covidien in Boulder and the city of Fort Collins.

The most rewarding thing about what she does is helping people communicate better, she says.

"I'm really excited about every (recording) I do," Mullen says. "It's helping people better understand each other and understand ideas."

Clients often put the recording on their website or use it in future presentations, she says.

"The really rewarding thing," Mullen says, "is to see people look at it and say, 'That's what we did today.'"

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